Why Do People Continue to Lose Money On their Trading Investments?

Define the Effect of Disposition.

The disposition effect is our propensity to sell lucrative assets while keeping losing ones. We sell profitable assets to assure a return, but we are wary of selling unsuccessful assets in the hopes of bringing them around.

Where it occurs

Assume you need funds for a summer trip. You're assessing your financial portfolio to arrange a lavish vacation.

You sell the shares of two firms. A and B are two companies. It has been valued since you purchased Company A. The stock price of Company B is less than your investment. Pricing has been constant in recent weeks. Selling shares in either firm would support your trips. To A or B？

“Company A deserves to win,” you reasoned. Furthermore, Company B may change its mind. For the time being, I'll retain it. You believe the sale of Company A to be a success. Company B continues to lose money.

You've succumbed to the enticing disposition impact and sold profits before admitting losses.

Individual outcomes

Investment novices and professionals are both aware of the influence of disposition. Despite our desire to be logical and intelligent, fear, pride, and misinformation drive many of our decisions. We can all agree that winning is better than losing. The choice between winning and losing seems straightforward and obvious.

Smart decision-making and excellent financial performance need a long-term view, not just one-time wins and losses. A wise investor would choose to sell failing assets over “winning” ones. Long-term losses and advantages result from the disposition effect.

Taxes increase the cost of disposal effect. Another reason to reconsider how we handle defeats and victories. Long-term tax rates are around half of the short-term tax rates. 1 Because short-term losses result in a lower tax burden, they are advantageous. By avoiding “disposition investing,” you may cut your losses and taxes.

Failure to sell failed assets harms our finances. If enough people make the same choices, this tendency might become global. How can group disposition influence behavior？

A company will incur long-term losses if it sells its winners early and its failures late. Over 2,300 active mutual funds were examined by Vijay Singal and Zhaojin Xu for the impact of dispositions on performance. Annually, “disposition-prone” mutual funds lag behind non-disposition-prone funds by 4-6 percent. Disposable money is also less likely to endure. According to Singal and Xu, only 77% of disposition-prone funds survive after 5 years. The growing failure rate indicates that these funds will expire soon unless they abandon their disposal strategy.

The disposition effect arises from investment, yet holding on to lost assets in the expectation of a return may occur in other contexts. Denver Airport developed a new baggage handling strategy for two years in 1990 that was $2 billion over budget. Even the Vietnam War, in which President Johnson provided troops and money despite poor outcomes, demonstrates our readiness to risk losses.

This effect is related to the sunk cost fallacy, or our tendency to continue subsidizing a failed business.

What causes it

Although the disposition effect has been widely studied in behavioral research, it boils down to fundamental human principles. To begin, use Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's prospect theory.

Prospect theory, loss aversion

The standard utility theory did not apply in situations of risk or uncertainty, according to Kahneman and Tversky. According to utility theory, rational individuals pick the most fulfilling option. Prospect theory was developed by Kahneman and Tversky to reflect unexpected judgments in the face of confidence vs uncertainty and loss against gain.

Kahneman uses situations to demonstrate prospect theory.

Which is the first problem？

• Guaranteed $900 OR 90 percent chance of $1000

• Choose 2

• Lose $900 with a 90% chance of losing “g $1000”

For Problem 1, the majority of people picked $900. We choose predictability over risk. Given the potential rewards, losing seems to be worse. Problem 2: The majority of individuals gamble. Losing $1000 is not much worse than losing $900. We are risk-averse when we win, but risk-seeking when we lose.

Another possibility: Someone recommends flipping a coin:

• Losing=$100

• Heads=$150

Even if the expected value is in your favor, many people will not accept the risk. Most people will not toss because they are afraid of losing $100. Loss aversion. Even if a loss is the best of all possible outcomes, we tend to avoid it. Loss aversion may be favorable evolutionary. We are more likely to survive if we avoid negative events than positive ones.

• Prospect theory makes sense of the disposition effect.

• Our earnings are conservative. We'll collect our prizes.

• We despise defeat. We don't want to lose.

• We are taking a risk. We maintain our losses and put more money at risk to win.

Mind-reading

Financial accounting is both physical and mental. Mental accounting separates each investment and based choices on current account balances. 8 These stories are heartfelt. Suppose:

• Tickets are $60. You do not have a receipt for your concert ticket. You paid money and liked the performance, in your view. So you purchase another ticket and go to the concert since wasting $60 is worse than wasting $120 in total.

• Mental accounting leads to poor judgments. The same as disposition. Losing investors have a difficult time closing mental accounts. They ride losers for much too long. According to Leroy Gross, “get-even-itis” is a financial affliction.

Pride and regret

The disposition effect is driven by pride and guilt. Paralyzing remorse Regrets are repeated by disposition. Why sell a failed stock before it reaches new heights？ Assume this winner is defeated. “Winning” and pride have an impact on manner. Selling losses and preserving winnings is an effective decision-making strategy. Avoid fear and arrogance.

Importance

Understanding its flaws may help to prevent prejudice. Understanding how letting goes of losers and keeping winners may benefit us, in the long run, encourages change. We may apply what we've learned in investing to other sectors.

Avoid

How can we prevent making poor decisions and investments as a result of the disposition effect？ Stop hoarding lost assets and trading victories too hastily. This is easier said than done, so we'll go through a cognitive process that may assist.

Wide framing, or putting our financial activities in perspective, is one way. An excerpt from Kahneman's “sermon” on broad framing follows:

You will do yourself a financial favor if you consider each of these bets to be a collection of tiny bets and repeat the mantra “you win a few, you lose a few.”

Take this quote. Broadframing assists traders in overcoming emotional reactions to gain and loss.

Beginnings

To learn more about people's aversion to loss, Hersh Shefrin and Meir Statman conducted research in 1985.

It was only via controlled experiments that the prospect theory was able to explain why investors “sell wins too early and ride losers too long.” They required market data to analyze this behavioral propensity properly.

The disposition effect was proposed by Shefrin and Statman as an explanation for “gain and loss realization” patterns. They discovered that investors were aware of the disposal effect, but typical economic frameworks were not. This impact was first categorized as part of prospect theory, mental accounting, regret avoidance, self-control, and tax concerns by Shefrin and Statmann. They used market data to back up their theory.

Their finding inspired an investigation into the financial applications of the disposition effect. One of the most prominent investing trends was called.

Social compulsion

Peer pressure and the disposition effect were both studied by Rawley Heimer in 2016. MyfxBook and other “investment-specific social networks” like it have made it easier for traders to compare their trading history on the Internet. Heimer utilized myfxBook data to assess traders' moods before and after they joined social networks.

Heimer observed that social interactions doubled the influence on disposition. He blames a positive self-image, among other social factors.

Trends in the market

Stefan Muhl and Tnn Talpsepp investigated how market actions influence investors' dispositions and responses.

“Bull markets” (increasing prices) and “bear markets” (falling prices) (prices receding).

The disposition influence was seen in both bull and bear markets, but it was stronger in negative markets. These results mirror intuition: if the market went down, investors would sell winners out of fear of total losses. Investors benefited the most from the disposition effect in down markets, they found, because of the “harsher pecuniary repercussions” they experienced.

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